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Zotac GT240: Entry-level Graphics Card
Roydon Cerejo, Nov 17, 2009 1715 hrs ISTA good effort from Nvidia, but is it good enough?
Good packaging, custom cooler, runs cool, DX10.1 support, 40nm die
Pricey, similar performance as a cheaper 9600GT/HD4670
Expert Rating :
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After we saw the first wave of 40nm chips from Nvidia, today we have a new member in the entry-level series in the form of the GT240. Unlike the other cards - G210 and GT220 - which were targeted primarily towards HTPC users, the GT240 is more of a gaming card and a good candidate for a dedicated PhysX card in your SLI system. So what lies at the core of this card? Let's find out.
The GT240 uses the new GT215 core built on the 40nm fabrication process. This new core is similar to the ones used in the GT220, so we have DX10.1 support, 8-channel LPCM audio through HDMI, etc. The shader count has increased to a healthy 96 stream processors, 550MHz on the core, 3600MHz for the memory - if you have the GDDR5 version, or 1800Mhz if you choose the GDDR3 version. Since this is an entry-level card, Nvidia has stripped the memory bandwidth to 128-bit, however, the GDDR5 should compensate for that. The Zotac card that we have today is the 512MB GDDR5 version, which is the highest one you can buy. Other manufacturers may release 1GB versions also, but for a card like this, it's pointless. 
Looking at the specifications, this card is probably going to be slightly slower than the 9800GT so we are looking at 9600GT performance levels. The 9600GT may have just 64 shaders instead of 96 but it comes with a full 256-bit memory bus, which should even things out.
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